


Tell You Anything

by Nevanna



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Mabel is still keeping secrets from the people who love her.





	Tell You Anything

**Author's Note:**

> This story was belatedly written for Week Two of the Month of Maybel (the theme was "Comfort"). It also fills the "Outsider POV" square for the Ladies Bingo amnesty period.

Your children have always had secrets from you.

Some of them were harmless, like the sign language that they once tried to create together, or the exploits of Dipper’s imaginary friend when he was six. (“They’re classified,” he piped, and you never found out where he learned that word.) Others worried you a little bit more: you didn’t know that your usually chatty daughter was being teased by her classmates two years ago, until the school called you. And still other secrets simply confused you when you heard them: despite what you read in Mabel’s letters from over the summer, you found it hard to believe that your husband’s uncle Stan really has a brother from another dimension.

The two of you only visited Gravity Falls once, when you first got engaged, but you didn’t notice anything strange about the town. Ever since you welcomed the kids home – with a new hat on Dipper’s head and a squealing pink pig in Mabel’s arms – you’ve suspected that there was more to their visit than they’re willing to tell you. Mabel treasures her scrapbook and stays up late most nights chatting online with her friends Candy and Grenda, and Dipper stammers a lot less than he did before he left, so you know that not all of their memories are bad.

But when Mabel wakes up screaming yet again, on a rainy October night, you’re pretty sure that not all of them are good, either.

You sit on the bed and hold her in your lap, the way that you did all the time when she was tiny. Usually, Dipper perches on her other side, but he’s made a new friend in the school’s chess club, so for the first time, he’s the one spending the night at another house.

“You’re all right now. It was just a dream.” You stroke Mabel’s hair. “Do you remember what it was about?” You look around for one of her stuffed unicorns, but they’re nowhere to be found.

“Mom?” She lifts her damp face. “What if I did something really bad, by mistake? And nobody got hurt, but they could have?”

“Do you mean ‘bad’ like when you hid from us instead of getting your braces tightened?” you ask, suddenly uneasy. “Or like stealing, or setting something on fire?”

“Bad like the end of the world,” she says.

“Well, I think we’d know if the world ended.” You start to smile, but the look on her face stops you. “And since it didn’t, you know that learning from your mistakes is part of growing up, right?” Your own words remind you that, any day now, Mabel is likely to push you away, insist that her parents will never understand, and leave the room in a huff.

Instead, she mutters, “I was afraid you’d say that,” and leans back into your embrace.

You remind her – as you’ll remind her brother – that she can tell you anything, as soon as she’s ready. Hopefully, you’ll be ready, too.


End file.
